Dear Dan Harmon,Last night I had the unexpected opportunity to see Harmontown, the documentary film by Neil Berkeley that documented a whirlwind tour across the U.S. of your podcast of the same name. The tour came after your notoriously well-publicized firing from Community, a show you created and which I consider one o ...

If it has an Ur-Image, if it has a Defining Moment the way that the national memory switches to color after the Kennedy assassination, it is the savage beating of Rodney King by L.A. police officers in 1991. The footage seems crude, noisy, and primitive by the standards of today's video technology, so tiny, so compact and ...

As has been discussed here and elsewhere ad nauseam, when you are dealing with certain pop-cultural icons, they belong to everyone, regardless of the opinions of their corporate attorneys. Like any other mythological figure, from Odin to Jesus to Sherlock Holmes, there is no really 'right' or 'correct' interpretation of ...

Kelly Reichardt's films are, to put it mildly, deliberate. Their pacing is so careful and precise as to be torpid (if you're generous) or boring (if you're not). I've seen every one of her movies, and I've enjoyed every one; like Chantal Akerman, there is a method to her maddening slowness. Every film builds to an emot ...

As America prepares to enter a fresh round of bombing in the Middle East, and as Barack Obama becomes the fourth president in a row to order attacks against a country that has not once conducted any aggressive action against our own, the world seems more and more like an Orwellian place. The existential terror ginned up a ...

In the cutthroat world of the DJ, fame can come in a second and go in half that time. Those who make it to the very top do so only because they possess a brilliance of technique combined with an understanding of crowds that no one else can touch. Frankie Wilde was one of those greats until deafness (caused by a genetic defe ...

I've never been much of a fan of American football.As I detailed here and elsewhere, while I grew up an natural mark for practically every team sport that finds favor in the lower 48, football never took hold with me for a variety of reasons. Although the same set of noxious elements were present to a greater or lesser de ...

The more you know about a subject, the less likely you are to enjoy a fictionalized treatment of it. Historical dramas, biopics, and ripped-from-the-headlines stories are often unsatisfying to those very close to the real-life people and events; too much must be glossed over, left out, abridged, or sweetened to meet the d ...

Modern cinema, from the blockbusting franchise entries of the 'vulgar auteurs' to the artsy but profitable realm of the self-contradictory indie giants, has of late become the realm of miniaturists. From Zack Snyder, the marketing-anointed visionary of hyperrealist action, to Wes Anderson and his delicately crafted chambe ...